1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus and a control method therefor, and more particularly to a recording apparatus which performs recording on a recording medium while repeating a main scanning operation of record-scanning with a recording head having a plurality of recording elements, in a main scanning direction, and a sub scanning operation of relatively moving the recording head and a recording medium in a sub scanning direction orthogonal to the main scanning direction.
2. Description of the Related Art
By way of example, in a prior-art recording apparatus of the scheme in which a recording medium is conveyed, there has been generally employed a configuration wherein a paper feed port for setting recording media is provided on an upper stream side in a conveyance direction in a recording mode, on the conveyance path of the recording medium, the recording medium is conveyed in the same direction as the conveyance direction in the recording mode, thereby to subject the recording medium to an edge positioning operation to a recording start position, and after the end of recording, the recording medium is conveyed in the same direction as the conveyance direction in the recording mode, thereby to eject the recording medium to a paper ejection port provided on a lower stream side in the conveyance direction. The “edge positioning operation” termed in this specification means the operation of relatively moving the recording medium and a recording head in a sub scanning direction, to a heading position which is the recording start position.
However, it is sometimes desirable from the viewpoint of a handling utility for a user that both a paper ejection port and a paper feed port are provided in an identical surface (for example, the front surface of a recording apparatus). Considered as a technique for realizing such a configuration is a structure in which the conveyance path of a recording medium extending from the paper feed port to the paper ejection port is U-turned inside the recording apparatus. It is very difficult, however, to construct a U-turn path so that some kinds of recording media, for example, thick paper and an envelope may also be reasonably passed. On the other hand, considered as a technique for realizing the front paper feed and ejection without requiring the U-turn is a method in which recording media are set on the side of the paper ejection port, and a recording medium is drawn in a direction reverse to a conveyance direction in a recording mode so as to be subjected to a conveyance operation to the heading position thereof, whereupon recording is started.
However, in case of the method in which the recording medium is drawn in the direction reverse to the conveyance direction in the recording mode, a conveyance amount in which the recording medium can be drawn is sometimes limited on account of restrictions in layout inside the recording apparatus. For this reason, there is a problem that an unrecordable region appears at the front end part of the recording medium, depending upon the size of the recording medium. In other words, a record-scannable region is limited at the front end part of the recording medium.
This problem is involved, not only in the recording apparatus wherein the recording media are set on the side of the paper ejection port, and the recording medium is drawn in a direction reverse to the conveyance direction in the recording mode so as to be subjected to the conveyance operation to the heading position thereof, followed by the recording, but also in any recording apparatus wherein a record-scannable region is sometimes limited in a region near an end part (front end part or rear end part) in the sub scanning direction of the recording medium.
The present invention has been made in order to solve the above problem, and it provides a recording apparatus in which, even when a record-scannable region is limited at an end part (or in a region near the end part) in the sub scanning direction of a recording medium, recording can be performed by extending a recordable region at the end part to the maximum and reducing a margin to the utmost, and a control method for the recording apparatus.